The internet? These people had these views long before the internet was even invented, you just know about it now.
If anything the internet has massively amplified progressive voices by making information so free, over half of youths today in countries like the US and the UK claim to be socialists, such a thing would be unthinkable even 20 years ago.
If anything the high degree of manipulation of media is a normalisation of the internet’s disruption to the status quo.
The left needs to stop blaming tech because we are all leftists discussing this here thanks to tech, and public projects like the internet as well as the open source movement and the information-sharing they facilitate is the #1 thing actually protecting women and minorities from laws like these.
These people have always existed and held these opinions. Many, many people are just awful, ghoulish bigots, and while they shush to be polite in person, they make it heard at the voting booth.
If you want to pin the blame on something, you have to detangle modernity and technology from corporate and institutional abuse of these things or you’re just a neo-luddite and you have more in common with these folks than you realize
I can say with 100% certainty that my family didn’t have political views until they got Facebook. They didn’t vote. They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t care. They all vote now. Christmas dinner used to be a time to catch up with everyone and see all the new offspring. Now it’s a Trump rally. Literally everyone in my family votes now, and they all say “I didn’t ever vote until Obama/Romney if they got online earlier, and they didn’t vote until Clinton/Trump if they got on later.
Tech isn’t entirely a bad thing, but it has certainly played a role in radicalizing nearly everyone.
I abandoned religion when I was 18 years old, and I spent a lot of time in church before then. Every church I went to talked about spiritual growth, how folks needed god to make good decisions, and the two paths you could take and how to avoid taking the wrong one.
I went with my uncle to about 20 churches in 2019(ish) and holy hell had it changed. It’s all radical politics now. Only one of those churches talked about spiritual growth, literally only one.
It spreads even to older folks who don’t use Facebook. They hear the radical speeches from everyone they know.
Whether we like it or not, most platforms are profit driven and in order to make the most money they have to keep people engaged. If you’re enraged you’re engaged, that’s the profit driven tech at work.
But this is a chicken or the egg problem, don’t you see?
They didn’t become radicalised, they started voting, so at least to some extent, perhaps one they themselves were unaware of, they already agreed with everything Trump says, with things the GOP stands for, nobody made the choice for them to do this, they gravitated towards this stuff because they always had shitty views, but they weren’t politically active.
The answer isn’t to pretend politics doesn’t exist or blame the printing press for printing or people for discussing politics, the answer is… well idk the answer. Maybe a civil war, casus beli being extermination for wrongthink? it’s at least more likely to happen than a global revolution leading to corporations losing control of algorithms and social media, idk what else at this point, humanity is fucked, most people are bloodthirsty as hell, active or not.
The internet? These people had these views long before the internet was even invented, you just know about it now.
If anything the internet has massively amplified progressive voices by making information so free, over half of youths today in countries like the US and the UK claim to be socialists, such a thing would be unthinkable even 20 years ago.
If anything the high degree of manipulation of media is a normalisation of the internet’s disruption to the status quo.
The left needs to stop blaming tech because we are all leftists discussing this here thanks to tech, and public projects like the internet as well as the open source movement and the information-sharing they facilitate is the #1 thing actually protecting women and minorities from laws like these.
These people have always existed and held these opinions. Many, many people are just awful, ghoulish bigots, and while they shush to be polite in person, they make it heard at the voting booth.
If you want to pin the blame on something, you have to detangle modernity and technology from corporate and institutional abuse of these things or you’re just a neo-luddite and you have more in common with these folks than you realize
I can say with 100% certainty that my family didn’t have political views until they got Facebook. They didn’t vote. They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t care. They all vote now. Christmas dinner used to be a time to catch up with everyone and see all the new offspring. Now it’s a Trump rally. Literally everyone in my family votes now, and they all say “I didn’t ever vote until Obama/Romney if they got online earlier, and they didn’t vote until Clinton/Trump if they got on later.
Tech isn’t entirely a bad thing, but it has certainly played a role in radicalizing nearly everyone.
I abandoned religion when I was 18 years old, and I spent a lot of time in church before then. Every church I went to talked about spiritual growth, how folks needed god to make good decisions, and the two paths you could take and how to avoid taking the wrong one.
I went with my uncle to about 20 churches in 2019(ish) and holy hell had it changed. It’s all radical politics now. Only one of those churches talked about spiritual growth, literally only one.
It spreads even to older folks who don’t use Facebook. They hear the radical speeches from everyone they know.
Whether we like it or not, most platforms are profit driven and in order to make the most money they have to keep people engaged. If you’re enraged you’re engaged, that’s the profit driven tech at work.
It doesn’t end well when everyone is radicalized.
But this is a chicken or the egg problem, don’t you see?
They didn’t become radicalised, they started voting, so at least to some extent, perhaps one they themselves were unaware of, they already agreed with everything Trump says, with things the GOP stands for, nobody made the choice for them to do this, they gravitated towards this stuff because they always had shitty views, but they weren’t politically active.
The answer isn’t to pretend politics doesn’t exist or blame the printing press for printing or people for discussing politics, the answer is… well idk the answer. Maybe a civil war, casus beli being extermination for wrongthink? it’s at least more likely to happen than a global revolution leading to corporations losing control of algorithms and social media, idk what else at this point, humanity is fucked, most people are bloodthirsty as hell, active or not.